It seems like nobody is willing here in the US to actually throw themselves into a revolt or meaningful change because our conditions are just good enough.
I still see everyone around me going for the best social status, the best job, the best car, the biggest house, and completely ignoring all the major flashing red lights.
I feel like a crazy person, like one of those people that’s missing the point. I feel surrounded by lunatics and typically that means you’re the crazy one but I just know I can’t be in this situation, it makes no sense.
Why is it like this? Why do I feel surrounded by NPCs? I can’t connect to pretty much anyone here. It all seems so trivial.
I don’t want to sound elitist or anything I just can’t see how people still don’t see the full picture
What to do?
It sounds mean, until you realise these people enable US government only to enjoy their rich lives thanks to the overseas profit-generating genocides and foreign regime changes, never commit revolution against their state, conveniently screamed the past year how Russians should have overthrown Putin and his party so NATO could balkanise Russia, and demonise China everyday when after centuries they finally get to enjoy better quality life in the past few decades.
This does not stop with Russia, China and war machinery business. They see outside of Europe (now they are even exploiting Europe) and themselves, rest of the countries and continents as cattle meant to serve them either as slave pets or as beef. Now, one could say, it is the state, but it comes back to proletariat committing revolution, instead of which they chose to enjoy American/white privilege.
Until 2008 crisis, and even after that, they loved their privileged environment gained by all the exploitation and genocide, and you can even see this in the form of nostalgia they sell the world in the form of “oh before 2008/09 it was all bliss and merry, wish those times were back”.
The ones who lose, only have themselves to blame, for they could have chosen to forgo the comfort of genocide-derived privileges, and committed revolution against the state. It was a matter of picking the greater, longer good but they chose to pick the shorter happiness, because USA apparently in their heads was an infallible Goliath.
To add a little, I value more the importance of 5+ billions of lives over 0.35 billion lives.
Edit: I think I missed something important. Not every average common person is a deranged Twitter liberal, however, it does not excuse them of being revolutionary. They choose to be, and openly admit being passive in drawing room discussions. If they had an excuse of being vulnerable from state actors due to having family/children, well now they and/or their children will face the consequences of their inaction.
I agree with many of your points here, but I am still weary of a lot of your discourse. Especially the “they” classification. Who is “they”? Would I be part of the “they” simply for being an American not by choice? Would American comrades be part of the “they”? Would people that have never been exposed to leftist thought and do not know any better be part of the “they”?
You just keep mentioning that this group of people, the “they”, believe all these things, when truly it is only the ruling capitalist class. The population is just kept complicit by immense propaganda that serves to protect those capital interests. Do you think that majority of people in the US generally think about or wish to exploit other countries and continents? Or that the people of the US have any method of action that could stop NATO or the IMF in its tracks? To magically fight back against the most extreme state intelligence apparatus in history to stop the horrific actions of their government? They do not. They are as subjugated as the exploited overseas. The only ones who benefit are the capital. So how do they only have themselves to blame?
You also mention “comfort” and “privilege” many times throughout and how that is preventing people in the US from stepping outside their comfort zone. I’m sorry to tell you, but that is not true at all. That privilege is a shiny fake veneer. There are of course some well off groups of people who live in million dollar homes with lavish luxuries and privilege, but the vast majority of the US population is struggling. Everyday on my drive to class I see countless people living in absolute squalor, children in tattered unwashed clothing, shuttered stores, and brutal policing of the poor. There are swaths of people working 3 full time jobs to barely pay rent and feed their children, massive numbers of people with rotting bodies that are unable to receive basic medical treatment or sanitation, massive homeless populations, and countless more failings of a capitalist system. There is no “short term happiness” here, or do you think those people are happy?
Their is no “they”, there is only the proletariat and those that oppose them. The people of the US are not your monolithic enemy. They have just been subjugated, brainwashed, and oppressed by the will of capital. So counting 350 million people (an absolutely absurd number), as “acceptable losses” and “deserving of punishment” is cruel and Non-Marxist.
As Sankara said, we must never stop explaining ourselves and we must never stop fighting. Another group of proletariat are not the enemy, they are instead comrades that have been led astray or oppressed to the point that they cannot fight back. Yes there will be those that will defend capital to their last breath, and those that will not able to be rehabilitated, but that number is minuscule compared to the number that can be saved.
By “they”, I mean the bourgeoisie rulers and their worshipper proletariat. It obviously does not mean the working class that opposes the structure, however, it also happens to be a negligible part out of the “working class”, and liberals and conservatives, that make up a lot of the working class, actively choose to surrender in front of capitalism, and go as far as worshipping it, because all the alternative systems have been apparently tried and are horrible.
This is the more important part. Why has the population not considered critically thinking and dissecting what is wrong with the existing system? It is not that hard to see the obvious blatant wrongs that have continued to exist in the face of people since decades. It is way too easy to see the marketing, the billboards, the bias in TV and print news media and so on. The problem is, people accept and take everything like good little boys and girls.
Definitely most people never think of it in this way. Some actually do though. However, I will change your question a little, and the answers will become yes. Rephrasing it suitably – is it okay if US government continued to exert and expand its sphere of influence across the world, and suppress any and all near peer competitors like China ad Russia, so that US citizens could enjoy more prosperous lives? You should hear a lot of “yes” for this.
Yes, its a bit harsh when I say 350 million people do not matter as much as 5+ billion people. But, do you realistically, and not idealistically, expect an awakening among US citizens on this scale? Something like the Joker movie has been culturally one of the most eye opening movies in recent decades. The whole Ukraine thing is being cheered on, where you would have expected some call out on the ridiculousness of it. China weather balloon became a spy device shot down by million dollar missiles.
I am being realistic, not idealistic when I say this. If the people are not interested and want to continue being ignorant, how can you awaken them? Yes, it is true that we must never stop explaining, and sure it sounds good in theory. However, the barriers to practicing the theory far exceed just the media propaganda mechanisms of US government.
People today choose to be ignorant. There is no way people cannot see things for what they are. They are so blatantly clear, and there is no requirement for deep, critical thinking today. It is the unfortunate truth, as hard it seems to digest. And I say this as someone who, for the past 3 years, has been teaching and advocating digital privacy and freedom via a huge privacy subreddit I founded myself. Most of the Western audience is happy to ignore something like Snowden and Assange revelations, and go for the China boogeyman, and this is after I have managed to open up and persuade many minds to see the façade.